Drought monitoring using thermal inertia model from MODIS data in Henan Province, China

An extreme drought was occurred in Northern China in spring, 2009. MODIS data were used in this paper because of its´ almost real time and large covered area. Because the subsurface of Northern China is bare soil or scarce vegetation covered area in spring, thermal inertia model which is suitable for this kink was used in this paper. Our results showed that most areas of the Henan province were in status of severe drought which is almost consistent with the in situ data. Which indicated that thermal inertia model can be used to detect and monitor the drought in spring.